My Tank Killer uncovered w/Pic. You own one.

[tkeracer619]

My reef was one of the most stable and rapid growing tanks that I had known of. I never did anything to it, had no algae, had extreme sps growth and color, really nice clams, and overall a great tank.

After about 8 months coral started to die off, I tested for everything your normal test kits will test for, did weekly 50g water changes, nothing seemed to be slowing down the death of my SPS, clams, and receding of all my other coral. My RBTA's started to bleach.


The tank burst a month ago leaving me with no choice but to set up a tank on the living room floor and fill my frag tank to 500% capacity. Everything is doing considerably better already, my initial reaction was to blame the sandbed...... this was a bit premature. Since I haven't scraped the glass on the tank in the middle of the floor I go and grab my handy Magnavor magnet cleaner, one of my buddy points to a small crack on it's side...... knowing the cost of it he looked shocked when I busted it apart.

Here is what I found


If you look at the middle of the close side you will see where it leaked, the crack was tiny.

Pull your magnets and give them a good twice over. I lost about $1000 in livestock due to this magnet. FWIW I will be replacing it with another magnavor, this one was very very old and had seen a lot of service.

I won't be leaving them in the tank anymore.

[SDguy]

I assume at one point or another it was dropped, hence the crack? Sorry for the trouble FWIW, I rarely leave mine in the tank since stuff likes to grow on it and hide in between it and the glass, like baby snails.

[skeeter-doc]

wow, I will be removing mine when I get home today

thanks, and sorry for all your losses

[Gdevine]

I NEVER leave my mag cleaner in the tank...for just this reason.

[rachelcb80]

Yikes! I used to take mine out everytime but have gotten lazy and now leave it in. I guess I'll go pull it out right now! Sorry for your loss but I hope others livestock can be saved from this.

[nyvp]

ditto out it goes

[tkeracer619]

I don't think it was ever dropped in my possesion, but I got it second hand so It probably was before then. The plastic doesn't seem to be very brittle, its still resonably strong. When I put it in the tank there was no crack, I looked it over very carefully. I assume it was the size of a hair or undeveloped. I used the cleaner for several months before I had any issues.

The only thing I can think of is one of my friends decided he wanted to clean my tank...... he has since been banished from physical contact. On his first stroke down he rammed it right into my sun coral..... I wonder if that was enough to crack the plastic, it broke the sun corals skeliton in two places. =[


The corner is busted due to my aggressive disassembly tactics.

Thanks for the comments and replies. I would hate for your livestock to go through the same thing.

Since the RBTAs have come out of that tank, they have split twice, in a month ^^. Can't wait to get it all into the 360 =]

[RichConley]

These are Iron Ferrite magnets right? I dont see why it would bother anything...there shouldnt be an copper or anything in there.

[tkeracer619]

I don't think so, I was also curious about that so I ripped it apart some more..... nothing good. It's made out of two metals internally, who knows what the plate is made out of. There is heavy corrosion inside this mag cleaner.

And I would like to take back the comment about the plastic being strong, the sides were quite brittle and I might also want to take back the comment of replacing it with another magnavor, they do a great job but this isnt cool, I guess it depends. Some epoxy coating

btw: for those that don't know, this mag cleaner retails for $300.

[ShapeGSX]

Jeez, what makes that worth $300 (unbroken, of course)?

[tkeracer619]

It's meant for really large tanks with thick glass, it was too big for my tank and I needed to use a shirt wrapped around the handle side or I could hang from it. Coraline algae is no match for it, no matter how long it has gone unscraped but im sure any of the top end magnets work equally as well. It was definitly oversized for my tank.

[Bax]

Wow! That's an eye opener!!!

Sorry for all your troubles!

[boxfishpooalot]

fwiw, the back of some gen-x subersible pumps do the same thing. I wouldnt be surprised if other pumps do that too.

Thanks for the heads up, i leave my magnet above water.

[King-Kong]

Ugh.

Gonna go check mine when I get home

[Sk8r]

Thanks for that heads-up, graphically illustrated. So sorry for your loss.

[tkeracer619]

I must say they have great customer support and fast response time. Here is the reply I recieved from Magnavore.

_____________________________________________
Mark,

You must look for the source of your dead corals somewhere else, not with the rusty magnet; after all, used rust bucket ships are sunk as artificial reefs where corals as well as other marine life thrives. There is nothing that could be even remotely toxic inside of Magnavore Magnetic Algae Cleaners. The tiny amount of iron that leached into your tank was far less than what many people dose in the form of iron supplements.

I must tell you that every single rusted magnet that we have seen was the result of a damaged shell from a drop, from the inadvertent slamming of two halves or from using tools to separate stuck magnets. Our magnets are heavy and full of magnetic strength, it is the action of gravity that makes them full of fail.

We would be happy to give you consideration on a replacement magnet, the same consideration that we give to all of our customers who damage a product. Furthermore, the magnets are repairable the small amount of surface rust that I see in your pictures is of no consequence to the performance of the magnetic blocks. Best thing for you to do is to return this piece to us and we can pot it into a new shell for around $25. Whenever one of our magnets gets damaged it should be sent back for repairs and not used in an aquarium. I damaged magnet will deteriorate eventually to the point of unusability and unrepairability.

Sincerely,

Jack Trebnio
Magnavore Co.

___________________________________________________

[RichConley]

You must look for the source of your dead corals somewhere else, not with the rusty magnet; after all, used rust bucket ships are sunk as artificial reefs where corals as well as other marine life thrives.

Thats an absurd answer. A ship in billions of gallons is a lot different from a 2lb magnet in 100g.


He is right about the levels of iron being pretty low though, and iron really isnt all that toxic.

[tkeracer619]

Whatever killed them, took a long time to do it. Long enough for me to purchase, rebuild, and save money for a 360G tank.

Though the first sign of trouble was this dieing overnight, 2 days after this pic was taken. I purchased this as a frag from a local a few months before as a piece with 3 branches.




Then the rest of the sps slowly died off starting with the plates and finaly ending when the tank burst and i lost the last remaining blue tort and montipora digitada. The rest of the corals stopped growing and started to show signs of irritaion, all of which are now recovering. I don't have a fancy phosphate digital meter but my test kit showed almost none or very close to none. The rest was unmeasurable or within spec. Heck I ran a bucket or two each month in water changes. At first I didn't but the tank really perked up each change so I altered my habits early on.

I probably will never know for sure.

[VaderWS6]

That happened to one of my magnets in my 75g reef. It was like that for about a year, but no negative effects to anything in the aquarium (luckily). I never leave my magnet in the tank anymore.

[LobsterOfJustice]

Originally posted by RichConley
Thats an absurd answer. A ship in billions of gallons is a lot different from a 2lb magnet in 100g.


He is right about the levels of iron being pretty low though, and iron really isnt all that toxic.

Rich, I understand what he is saying. I know the iron and rust from the ships get diluted in billions of gallons of water, but there are definantly higher local concentrations of dissolved metals for the corals that are literally growing on the rusted ship.

Think of your topoff water. When my auto topoff cuts on, its not enough to lower the salinity of the tank, but if you test the local salinity of where the water is being added, it certianly will be lower.

[RichConley]

Is there any possibility that the tank has been leaking? That would cause low salinity (because of ATO) which would cause all these problems..


I just really doubt that the magnet caused the coral loss.

[Snowboarda42]

Look at it on the bright side, that magnet acted as a small phosphate sponge in your tank!

Rust = Ferric Oxide = PhosBan, Phospur, etc.

[tkeracer619]

There was one point that the ato ran but I had turned off the return pump that night due to a leaking bulkhead, it turned my sump into a freshwater sump and flooded about 30 gallons on the floor. Stop a drip cause a flood. D=

The tank didn't leak, and was always right on ~1.026 with my calibrated refractomer.

When a sandbed crashes do you get algae blooms and such or really high nitrates? The sand looked great and didnt smell too bad when i scooped it out. Very low alea growth. Wouldn't something simple be detectible if that was the case?